How about ovarian, Jack?

Borrego Springs

She liked hiking, quilting, gourding, & just sitting in the sun

 

I used to watch the TV show “60 Minutes” years ago, but I stopped because I was put off by their frequent resort to what I call “gotcha journalism”.  They would ambush some poor chump and pummel him so badly that I would feel sorry for him, no matter what he was reported to have done (or said or thought, or represented)  But now, after Florence DiJulio alerted me to this segment I may have to start watching again.  Check this out, and stifle your disbelief.  This kid is real.. 

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57606995/boy-wonder-jack-andraka/

Jack Andraka is 15 years old and a high school freshman.  He has invented a method for detecting pancreatic cancer early.  The test costs 3 cents, and takes only minutes to perform.  I’m not going to try to tell you how it works: I don’t quite understand myself, I would garble what I think I know in the telling, and you probably don’t care, anyway.  Suffice it to relate that it involves detection of a rise in the abundance of the protein mesothelin.  Pancreatic cancers are associated with an abnormal concentration of mesothelin, apparently from an early stage.  If you can detect pancreatic cancer before it spreads you have a good chance of saving the life of the patient.  Otherwise, no.  Jack may just have saved thousands of lives.

 

Of course, Jack’s test has to get FDA approval, and this involves massive clinical trials extending over several (to many) years.  If I understand the situation correctly, Big Pharma (Pfizer, I think) stands ready and eager to shoulder the costs of such a test.  And why not?  If the test costs 3 cents and they sell it for a dime, and if everybody in America gets it, the gross profit would be something like $2.45 million.  (Better check my figures; I did that in my head.)  Anyway, profits would be enormous.  And, guess what?  Jack patented the idea!  At  that age all I could think about was girls and basketball!

 

It is well known that Bill Gates and, I think, Steve Jobs dropped out of college and went on to be billionaires.  Jack Andraka may be the first billionaire to drop out of high school.

 

To show you just how badly we need an early detection device for pancreatic cancer I’m going to try to attach a graph.

 

Hell, I can't figure out how to make this damned thing bigger

CAROLYN!

                 Oh, I see.  Just click on it and it gets bigger.  Who would have thought!  Duh!

Damn!  How I do hate dumping ice water on my own enthusiasms, but I must.  In reading about the cancer marker  mesothelin - that which Jack detects - I find that there is considerable doubt about  usefulness for detecting pancreatic cancer.  I will dig deeper and report.

 

 

 

 

 



Profiles in research excellence: Dr. Muneesh Tewari

Trip to the Canadian Rockies, 1990

We planned to climb that peak the next day, but I chickened out

Brace yourselves for an avalanche of blogs: I am full of energy and anti-cancer zeal, but neither MRC nor Fred Hutch has anything for me to do.  I am supposed to be helping Dr. Rivkin with a long-term goal but I procrastinate, chiefly because I don’t know where to start.  Thus I will return again and again to the literary form I know best: 700 words on something simple.  I will slow down only when I begin to run out of pictures of Linda, and that is not going to happen any time soon.  So, anyway….

As part of my “Profiles in Research Excellence” I give you Dr. Muneesh Tewari.  I have met Dr. Tewari several times at the Hutch, and I have been greatly impressed.  More young guys like Muneesh on the job and cancer hasn’t got a chance.  He was featured in a recent article in the Fred Hutch newspaper, which I hereby plagiarize:

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Exploring how to put the brakes on cancer

Like many brainy Detroit kids who excelled in math and science, Dr. Muneesh Tewari figured he'd become an engineer at one of the auto plants that ruled the local economy.

But when his high-school biology teacher got him a summer job at a cancer-center laboratory, tinkering with automobile engines didn't seem so interesting anymore. The intricacies of the human body captured Tewari's imagination.

"I just got the bug," he said. "I knew I wanted to do medical research."

Today, Tewari straddles the worlds of laboratory science and oncology. He's part of a new breed of researchers who believe that in order to learn about many-faceted diseases like cancer, one must appreciate the complexities and interactions of the whole body, like a network.

Since coming to the Hutchinson Center in 2005, Tewari has focused within those networks of cells on particular molecules called micro-RNAs. These molecules act as brakes on different parts of a cell, keeping genes in check. He and his colleagues are trying to understand why the brakes fail — allowing unchecked cell growth — in cancerous ovarian and prostate tumors.

Tewari's work holds promise for both treatment and early detection of cancer. If he can identify which micro-RNAs are altered in cancer, the path to developing drug treatments against them is a lot shorter than with typical protein-targeting drugs.

Certain microRNAs are abundantly made by tumor cells, and Tewari recently discovered these in blood samples — a finding that he called "very surprising." If this early work continues to be promising, a blood test could be used to detect lots of different types of cancer or to show how well a treatment works.

Tewari concedes that the hurdles — from securing funding to getting experiments to work — can be daunting. But his persistence in these areas has allowed him to make significant strides in his work. In recognition of these strides, Tewari received the 2010 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the nation's highest honor for scientists at the beginning of their independent research careers.

Tewari is grateful for the acknowledgment and said that caring for patients makes it easier to weather research challenges and teaches him how to triumph over setbacks.

"In the clinic, I see cancer up close and personal," he said. "With patient care, you get exposed to what the problems really are, and you encounter questions that you might not think of without seeing the disease in that light."

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A few facts:  Dr.Tewari did his doctoral studies and residency at U. Michigan, then went on to post-doctoral research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.  He has received several very prestigious (and lucrative) awards, including a Presidential Early Career award, one of the best.  In the last ten years he has been an author or co-author on 90 publications dealing with ovarian cancer.  (To put this in perspective: in my ~ 40 year career I authored 106 refereed publications.)  *Finally:  I couldn’t determine how old he is, but from my rather skewed perspective he is pretty darned young! *

So:  Go get ‘em, Muneesh!



GOOD E-NEWS

Our B & B in Kingussie, southern Scotland, 1999

 

The hound was friendly

 

http://getinvolved.fhcrc.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=21341.0&printer_friendly=1

That’s the web address of the latest Fred Hutchinson e-newsletter.  I urge you all to click on it, then “subscribe”.  If you do, every so often you will get notification of some interesting – and understandable – news about all kinds of cancer.  Sure, you don’t want to think about cancer.  Nobody does.  But, man up!.  It won’t go away if we ignore it.

The latest issue has some very interesting and important, content.  First article is about breast cancer; how to avoid having it.  If you are a woman under the age of 90 you should read it.  If you have close relatives who have had breast or ovarian cancer, you must read it.

The second article relates that men who have had (or currently have) prostate cancer can prolong their lives by – drinking coffee!  Apparently the statistics are irrefutable, even if no one is certain how coffee does its thing.  There is no evidence, one way or the other, concerning whether drinking coffee can prevent prostate cancer.   I hope so; my four cups/day for 50 years should render me completely safe.

The third article is fascinating.  I blogged earlier (4/2/12) about aspirin as a cancer preventative agent.  This article affirms that it is, and also affirms that no one is absolutely certain why.  There seems to be some evidence that aspirin actually prevents deleterious mutations.  The excitement is building.  If we can prevent mutations (how, for heaven’s sake?), we can conquer most sorts of cancer once and for all.  Of course, if we stop mutations altogether we will cease to evolve, and be overtaken and subjugated by a race of – say - intelligent cockroaches.    But not for a long time, so don’t worry.

The final article deals with the role of viruses in causing cervical (and possibly other kinds of) cancer.  It has been known for years that something called the human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical cancer.  As a result, a vaccine is available to prevent this particular threat to womanhood, resulting in a sharp decline in prevalence and mortality.  Apparently viruses are suspected in other kinds of cancer, including lung, squamous cell skin cancer, and lymphoma, although the evidence is not in.  Alas, ovarian was not mentioned.

Enjoy your autumn.  In Bellingham the trees are just passing their peak of splendor.  Unfortunately, it is difficult to see them through the fog. 



BACK AT WORK

Another reason that people leave Michigan

 

Linda's Mom is visible through the windshield.

 

I must have taken the picture.  I can assure you, I didn't drive.

 

My vacation is over.  I had a great time in Flagstaff, and even enjoyed the brief snowstorm that nature treated us to – in early October!  Flagstaff is a college town, and it was bit unusual to see all those college girls walking to class through  a wind-driven cloud of big snowflakes – in shorts.  The rest of the time I was there the weather was great; very cold (20s) at night, but into the 70s by mid-day.  We took a short walk or two (very short, in my case) and explored a slice of the Navajo reservation.  On Monday I drove up to Grand Canyon National Park, arriving a few minutes before it was submerged by a tsunami of  Japanese tourists.  They seem to travel in family groups of about a dozen, and at each overlook they take pictures of the whole group, multiple pictures, one for each camera, all crammed up at the rail.  You’ve got to stay ahead of them or you’re sunk.  And this was just the first day the Canyon had been open.  I don’t even want to think about how it is in mid-summer.  If this sounds intolerant, forgive me.  Cultural mores differ.  Mine and theirs are really different.

So, happily, the trip went very well, until I attempted to come home.  Flagstaff is surprisingly hard to navigate, for such a small town (size of Bellingham, about).  I have an iPad (thank you, Dick Ingwall, for assuring me that I could make it work).  So, I simply set “Current Location” for starting point and “Mesa Airport” for destination.  Siri got me out of Flag unerringly and guided me efficiently to – the wrong airport.  It seems I should have "inputted" (is there really such a word?)  “Phoenix Mesa Gateway” airport.  So it wasn’t Siri’s fault, and she took me, once again unerringly, to the right place.  I was worried because I had burned my reserve time, but when I checked in a found that the plane was an hour late (fog in Bellingham).  As it happened it left about two hours late – and then diverted to Las Vegas to pick up -  a TIRE!  I got home after seven.  They didn’t even offer us free drinks!

So, anyway, Dick Ingwall is back on the job.  The NYTimes has printed an article describing the use of a new (?) class of drugs in cancer immunotherapy.   You know the basics.  The body has evolved an immune response that descends on dangerous foreign objects and kills them before (usually) they can do us much harm.  However, our immune system will stand by and watch as cancer runs riot, and do nothing.  I had always thought that this was because our white cells and T cells and all those other guardian molecules didn’t recognize the danger – cancer cells were, after all, part of “us”.  If the immune system went around killing “us”, it might, perhaps, kill brain cells.  In fact, that may be what’s going on in Washington (D.C.) right now; killer T-cells attacking the brains of our elected public servants.  Quick!  Call the CDC!

However, if I get the gist of this article, part of the problem is that at least some cancer cells coat themselves with a protective layer of specialized molecules.  Thus, this type of therapy involves smothering the protective cells, thus permitting the immune-system guardians of our health to do their thing.  Drugs have been developed and tried on seriously ill patients, with encouraging results.  They seem to be particularly effective with melanoma, but also help with several other kinds of cancer.  Ovarian was mentioned, but not elaborated on.  I will give you the URL below.  Big Pharma is waiting in the wings, checkbook in hand.  If BP can hurry us through the trials, and then get an effective drug on the market, they can have their profits and more, sez me..

I am still  perplexed, however.  How did it come about that cancer cells have learned to protect themselves in this way?  They don’t “evolve”, in any sense that I understand.  To evolve requires the "evolver" to have progeny that can benefit from an advantageous mutation.  Cancers don’t have progeny.  Or do they?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/health/breaking-through-cancers-shield.html?_r=0



ON VACATION

Snack break, hiking in Yorkshire Dales NP

 Summer, 2000

 

The principal purpose of this blog entry is to inform you that I am not going to be posting anything at all for at least a week.  I am going to Flagstaff to visit Kristen and Joe, and I won’t be cursing my computer until at least the 15^th of October.  So, if you need a blog-fix, try re-reading some earlier entries, enjoying Linda’s pictures (their delight never fades) – AND, maybe, thinking about the points I have attempted to raise so as to tell me if, where and how I’m wrong.

However, in passing I should point out to you that today is the 100^th anniversary of the American Cancer Society.  The Bellingham Herald with its nose-for-news unrivaled  anywhere, features a very long and mostly valuable article on the occasion.  (My suspicion - that they used it to fill out the Sunday edition to a respectable thickness - is contemptible.)  The article speaks enthusiastically about the reduction in cancer deaths in the past century, and with optimism about advances in the near future.  The fact is, however, that progress so far has really consisted of picking low-hanging fruit.  Some cancers have proven to be easily curable, and some – to a large extent – preventable.  (Toss away that pack of Camels. Get those mammograms. )  Unfortunately, we are making little or no progress against our other enemies.  Pancreatic, for instance, and to all our great sorrow, ovarian.

 



FRUSTRATION (& INCOMPETENCE?)

Linda and grandkids

 The one with a finger in her mouth is now a new mother.

 The one with her posterior prominently displayed will be so in a matter of weeks.

 

I spent most of the day doing routine grunt work for MRC on my office computer.  A short time ago I decided to hang it up for the day, so “saved” my work like a good boy is supposed to do.  However, probably due to age-related ineptitude – I lost the entire mess .  Oh, well – it is raining most of the time so I can do it all over again tomorrow!

The purpose of writing this blog is to see if I can download graphs.  The one (hopefully) shown below will emphasize  unpleasant truth you probably already know: although we are making fair to good progress against breast cancer, ovarian still has us at a standstill.

Hooray! It only took 45 minutes!